Difference between data, information and knowledge

we all are aware of these three terms data , information and knowledge because these terms are very commonly used in our daily life .sometimes even we mix these terms in order to explain something like if someone is explaining and information is the best word to use in that situation but one use the word knowledge. There is lots of debates are ongoing on these terms and we can find these in literature easily some says data comes first and after that data converts into information and that information converts into knowledge and some says these terms are related to each other .

Stanemark D 2002 mention in his article “information vs knowledge” that these writers tried to define these three terms related to each other the figure shows the relation between these terms. Ackoff(1997), Bellinger et al(1997),Davenport and prusak(1998) and Choo et al(2000)


Figure1



Source [http://www.viktoria.se/~dixi/km/chap3.htm]





He called this figure as oversimplified image and he said that relating these terms is not an appropriate way. According to the criticism he made in his article he wrote, if we define these in terms of each other the relationship between these become linear and this image shows that the distance between data and information is same as the distance between information and knowledge and also image shows symmetry also tells us that data converts into information and then information converts into knowledge and one can not go other way round this way of thinking also adopted by several other writers and define information in terms of data and knowledge in terms of information Table 1 mention all these definition with there writers names and how they define these terms .











Table1







Source [http://www.viktoria.se/~dixi/km/chap3.htm]


He also mention Another commentator [ Tuomi 1999] according to Tuomi knowledge is already exist before information can be formulated and before data can be measured to form information. According to Tuomi there is no raw data he gave the totally inverse process as mentioned up that data comes first that converts into information and that information converts into knowledge but Stanemark D was not agree with both of these concepts he mentioned in his article that its not an one way or an other way according to his understanding he said, “data and information are only two opposite ends on a continuum. We can concentrate our attention to certain aspects of knowledge, making it focal. The focal knowledge can, sometimes and partially, be articulated and furnished with words. I refer to this as information. If the information becomes too de-contextualised, i.e. too distant from the knowledge required to interpret it, I shall call it data. Since a piece of text itself is not sufficient to exhaustively describe the knowledge to which it refers, the reader's tacit knowledge must be compatible with that of the writer in order to interpret and fully comprehend the implications of the information. Hence, what one conceives as information another sees as data.”. He also mention another concept which is knowledge is require for both data and information and at the same time data and information constructing new blocks of knowledge by [Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995]
According to my understanding these terms data, information and knowledge, knowledge plays important role in every stage or I can say that knowledge is there when someone talk about data as well as information the question is how.


Reference

Assessed on march 1, 2008 By Dick Stenmark Dept. of applied Information Technology IT university of Gothenburg

http://www.viktoria.se/~dixi/km/chap3.htm

Social Technologies

As this blog is about knowledge management and to share knowledge there are some technical facilities out in the market which is reach able to every one some of them are free to register and for some of them one have to pay to subscribed .

As I am a student having a knowledge management course in this module according to my understanding sharing of knowledge is not entirely depends on these social technologies (in some cases) there are some small organisations might not need this kind of technology but still if there employees need to use these social technologies to share the knowledge within the organisation and outside the organisation they are free to do that. Here let me give you example of my organisation my class room , my teacher of this module called our class an organisation we are in total about 24 students in the class all the students divided into 4 groups what we do normally is prepare a topic before we go to lecture discuss that topic within the group comes up with our own ideas and then after that argue with each other within the group and come to the point where we all of us agree on that point then in the lecture we present our ideas to other groups after finishing the presentation we take questions from the other groups and as well from the teacher and justify our view point with the examples that’s how we share our knowledge first within the group and after with whole class . As I mentioned that the number of students are approximately 24 so we can share our knowledge face to face or by giving presentation to whole class but even we can share our knowledge by presentation our teacher gave another idea to share the knowledge by making blog and invite others to read these blog and give there comments .So what I am trying to say every organisation have different situation or different plat forms or social technologies where employees can share there knowledge.

Whereas in some big organisations management need to or have to use these social technologies to share knowledge by creating blogs , web forums , and other social technologies such as wikki. because of the large number of employees its not possible to go to each and every employee of the organisation to address the issues or share with them new knowledge.

What is blog
Blog is one of the form of social technologies which is created by the individuals and tends to focus on the current topic individuals can receive comments on there blogs from other individuals and able to answer that comments. Some of the blog provider charge to access the material but some give this facilities free and also writer of the blog can edit his own blog any time or add anything which is related to that topic.[Semple 2006]

What is wikki

Wikii is an web based application where participants allow to write collaboratively which can further be edit the content of documents these documents can be any thing supported by web, with hyperlinks to any where on the world wide web this can be in any shape images, videos and document. The meaning of wikki is quick , fast and this application named after the Hawaiin [Leuf and Cunningham, 2005]


Reference






Assessed 6 march 2008 “ The case of the corporate Wikki”

http://epress.anu.edu.au/info_systems02/mobile_devices/ch10s02.html

Nonak SECI MODEL

Ikujiro Nonaka,Ryoko Toyama,Noboru Konno Hirotaka Takeuchi present a model for knowledge creation they think that knowledge creation consists of three elements
1 SECI
2 ba
3 knowledge assets



According to them there are two types of knowledge explicit and tacit.

Explicit knowledge is knowledge which can be stored in the form of data and can be expressed in the words, in the form of scientific formulae this knowledge is very easily transferable to other individuals and can be shared. .[ Ikujiro Nonaka 2005]


Tacit knowledge is a knowledge which can not be transferable easily to other individuals because it’s highly personal its an reflection of intuitions, individuals own experience and skills. .[ Ikujiro Nonaka 2005]



They also mentioned that western epistemology only consider explicit knowledge but both knowledge explicit an tacit are important for the creation of knowledge, without tacit knowledge explicit knowledge losses its meaning. [ Ikujiro Nonaka 2005]



What is SECI

Nonaka and his companion describe SECI as follows, the knowledge is created through the conversion between tacit and explicit thorugh this conversion this knowledge expands in both wise quality and quantity. SECI is an abbreviation of four words these are S stands for socialisation, E stands for externalisation, C stands for combination and the last one I stands for internalisation also figure 1 shows the SECI model created by [Nonaka 2005]

Figure 1




source http://mohamedaminechatti.blogspot.com/2007/06/icalt-2007.html



Explanation of the four mdes is as follows

Socialisation (from tacit knowledge to tacit knowledge)
In this individuals gain knowledge by spending time together or by living in the same environment, this kind of knowledge can be acquired by observing things individual can not learn tacit knowledge through textbooks or through any other written manuals.[ Ikujiro Nonaka 2005]

Externalisation (from tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge)
Externalisation is process in which tacit knowledge turns into explicit knowledge this can be done by doing storing the idea of individual in the form of image, words, figurative language, and visual.[ Ikujiro Nonaka 2005]

Combination (from explicit knowledge to explicit knowledge)
Combination involves the process in which explicit knowledge combines with an various elements of other explicit knowledge this can be done by communication, meetings and presentations.[ Ikujiro Nonaka 2005]
Internalisation (from explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge)
In this process individuals have to find out what knowledge they need within the organization.


BA
BA is a concept gave by Japanese philosopher and professor Nonaka use this concept for his SECI model of knowledge creation. According to Nonaka BA can be shared space in which individuals can share there ideas This space can be exist physically or virtually as shown in the figure 2 He also described four characteristics of ba which are as follows [ Ikujiro Nonaka 2005]



Figure 2




Source http://www.polia-consulting.com/A-Japanese-approach-of-KM-the-Ba.html













Originating BA
Is defined as individuals and face to face interactions.[ Ikujiro Nonaka 2005]


Dialoguing BA
Is defined as collective and face to face interactions. .[ Ikujiro Nonaka 2005]


Systemizing BA
Is defined as collective and virtual interactions. .[ Ikujiro Nonaka 2005]


Exercising BA
Is defined as using the information [Geytere T 2008]



Critical Analysis of SECI Model

As we know that SECI model is well known and is most accepted concept in knowledge management but there is some limitations in this model . I am quoting some of the criticism made by other writers in the litrature which are as follows

Stephen Gourlay from Kingston University he wrote that according to Nonaka tacit and explicit knowledge interaction depends on four mode of knowledge conversion is flawed but three modes have not supported by evidence that cannot be explained more simply .This model omit inherently tacit knowledge and use radicaly subjective definition of knowledge.

Another criticism made by one of my classmate according to him in nonak’s model Nonaka didn’t mention anything about culture by further adding he said that in japan employees stick with one job until there retirement but its varies in other countries [Samir Shaikh 2008 middlesex university]











My view on SECI Model

As I am working in retail industry I can’t find this theory be totally in practice within my organisation some of the points in practice in my organisation but some exist hypothetically or otherwise don’t exist why is that there is no proper way of sharing knowledge because in my organisation the number of employees are large and its not possible for higher management to go to each and every person and guide them and on the other hand if someone got knowledge about something they scared to share that knowledge with other colleagues the reason why is they might be think that if we transfer this knowledge to other may be they going to take there position e.g in my organisation there is no Externalisation process which is one of the modes of Nonaka’s model.


References

1 Retrieved March 3, 2008

http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/ht/thonglipfei/exer_ba.html

2 Geytere T - Explanation of SECI model of Nonaka and Takeuchi [95] Retrieved 28 February 28, 2008

http://www.12manage.com/methods_nonaka_seci.html

3 I Nonaka, R Toyama, N Konno - Knowledge Management,2005 Retrieved February 27 ,2008
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YTrwo1MaVj4C&oi=fnd&pg=PA317&dq=%22Nonaka%22+%22SECI,+BA+AND+LEADERSHIP:+AUNIFIED+MODEL+OF+DYNAMIC+...%22+&ots=IxB4mENVzk&sig=mhrpurMcz80vIGEKyZ65PkiKNQ8#PPA333,M1

4 Stephen Gourlay Blackwell Publishing LTD 2006 assessed on 6 march 2008

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2006.00637.x?cookieSet=1

Knowledge management

There is no universal definition of knowledge management if we ask someone to define knowledge management they define it differently as compared to others such as, if we ask someone to define physics every body can define physics with same words and sense as physics was defined in its early years but this is not the case in knowledge management .

If we take a look in literature we can see lots of work been done on knowledge management some define knowledge management but some authors avoid the term complety and just focus on the specific aspects of the topic like knowledge , innovation and learning [Costello 1996].on the other hand some of them said that knowledge management is concept which is related to organisational learning ,information sharing and collaborative work [Schultze 1998] . Recently 434 articles been analysed by Ruab and Ruling [Ruab and Ruling 2001] from ABI/Inform they found that there is two different communities involved in knowledge management debate one is focusing on IS/IT and the other one is focusing on general management these authors also said that both these communities are making joint efforts to sustain knowledge management as a fashionable field. The community which is emphasising on IS/IT discussed by Harry Scarborough who is reviewing the literature of knowledge management for the institute of personnel and development according to him 70 percent of the articles published in 1998 appeared in IS/IT literature [Scarbrough, Swan et al1999] keeping this in mind [Gold, Malhotra et al .2001] suggest that many knowledge management projects are more than information projects. [Litrature review for C-sand 2002 volume 1 ]

Definitions from literature

1 Harry Scarbrough [Scarbrough ,Swan et al. 1999] defines knowledge management as “any process or practice of creating ,acquiring ,capturing , sharing and using knowledge wherever it resides ,to enhance learning and performance in organisations” [Litrature review for C-sand 2002 volume 1 ]

2 Alavi and Leidner [Alavi and Leidner2001] define as “knowledge is information possessed in the minds of individuals: it is personalized information (which may or may not be new,unique,useful or accurate) related to facts ,procedures, concepts, interpretations, ideas, observations, and judgements”
Definition from web
1 Microsoft’s web site define knowledge management as “ knowledge is the use of technology to make information relevant and accessible wherever that information may reside. To do this effectively requires the appropriate application of the appropriate technology for the appropriate situation. Knowledge management incorporates systematic processes of finding , selecting , organising , and presenting information in a way that improves an employee’s comprehension and use of business assets.” [Brown and Duguid 2000 ].

I examine some of the definition and come across this definition which is as follows.

" knowledge management can define as the conversion of tacit knowledge, personal experience, and personel skills into explicit knowledge by using the tools such as learning resources (available to all employees ) by sharing and distributing "


Refference

1 [Litrature review for C-sand 2002 volume 1 ] assesed on 05 2008
http://www.c-sand.org.uk/Documents/WP1001-02-KMLitRev.pdf draft

2 By Meridith Levinson assesed on feb 2008

http://www.cio.com/article/40343